Sunday, March 1, 2009

Do I have to make turns?

Took the day off Friday to go to Snowbird with my brother, who was getting married on Saturday. Not much of a day to be out, with strong winds in the morning and dust on crust conditions. Still, any skiing is better than not skiing.

The real fun, though, was in the afternoon, when my son came up to ski with me. We spent all afternoon on Chickadee (the very easy beginner lift at Snowbird). For the last run of the day, I convinced him to go over to the Wilbere lift and take a run down Big Emma, still a "green" run, but more difficult than Chickadee. Difficult enough that he actually had to make turns instead of just doing figure 11's top to bottom.

We had so much fun that on Saturday after the wedding, we went up to Alta for free after three on Sunnyside. He asked me if he needed to make turns at Alta. When I told him that he did at least some of the time, he responded "I want to go to Snowbird instead."

He's asked me no fewer than five times today when we can go back. I think we'll both be sad when the snow finally all melts.

5 comments:

He's good! How old? I've been taking my 4-yr-old out this year and she's getting a lot better, but it's like pulling teeth to convince her not to go straight down. She can turn, but prefers not to and she makes me nervous when it gets steep. Any tips?

A fun way to encourage turns is to find a tree or other obstacle to ski around. Turning back and forth for the sake of scrubbing speed is boring to little kids, but if they're finding an interesting way down the hill that requires turns, it will be fun.